According to several sources both in print and online, the color blue is currently the “favorite” color of the predominantly Western world on several continents (not, however, in Asia or South America), and it has been for more than a century. Some argue that this color is more neutral and less associated with symbolic signs than is red or green. Many designs and logos in the Western world involve some shade of blue. Psychologists report that people are more productive in an environment that has blue color because they are more relaxed. Why is this so?

In attempting to uncover “the semiotics” of blue, a group of 340 Practicum students including an art historian, a graphic designer, and several artists, researched and selected this eclectic group of images, objects and materials that are in the exhibition cases located along the outside wall of the gallery. This is by no means a comprehensive study, philosophical argument or treatise on the color blue. Instead, the attempt here is to identify blue in different mediums (paint, ceramics, textiles dyes, and photography) and observe how these blues can carry cultural meaning.

Circinus & Horologium is a three person exhibition featuring new works by Daniel Ingroff, Lia Lowenthal and Danielle McCullough in various media: drawing, painting, textile and photography.

The space created by documenting a constellation is a two-dimensional linear drawing, but the space being referenced is three-dimensional and impermanent. Circinus and Horologium, two modern constellations, were thought to resemble 17th century instruments for constructing star patterns and named after the drafting compass (Circinus) and the pendulum clock (Horologium Oscillitorium) by their discoverers. Symbolically, these constellations are a representation of constellations themselves and how we perceive them in time and space.

The artists in this exhibition investigate this synergetic relationship between time and space. Using various types of temporal spaces – immediate, meditated, or historical – with drawing as a foundation, they interpret the bounds of dimensionality by exploring how passages of time construct form.

The exhibition opens on November 16th and there will be a cyanotype workshop for students in the morning and afternoon, followed by an artists’ lecture from 7-9 pm.

Subvert comments on the experience of something appearing to be one thing but actually being another. It consists of four large works of which each deals with a different and varied level of deception. The topics range from coerced statements, to lyrical misconceptions, spam email and colorless flipbooks. It speaks to the increasingly difficult task of locating the correct and true in a system that is bloated with the inaccurate information. Subvert contributes to the dialogue of falsehoods perpetuated in all communication. The pieces are a visual exploitation of the absurdities that can occur in communication. Subvert comments on the importance of effective and truthful visual design by exposing these frailties in communication.

Text and images have had a complex relationship in the visual arts. In Southern California, this history is especially rich in the 1960s and 1970s, where artworks often infused images and text to provoke analytical thinking but also pointed to the materiality of the word itself. Following in this vein, these seven Los Angeles artists have developed their own unique approach to language.

Working in a variety of media: painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, knitting, quilting, and book-making, these artists employ their specific visual strategies with text as they engage the viewer. Some of the works use language as part of an abstract visual experience and do not rely on the linguistic aspect of the word itself. Other artworks create a tension or disjunction through an unlikely pairing of text and material. Words, in some pieces, can be markers of a specific urban experience or can point to the rhetoric of newspapers and the politics of representation. Several artworks play with meaning and institutional texts. Others present a visual image of poetry.

“Word is…” can be abstraction, provocation, or ruse, as the artists in this exhibition redirect our thinking by their command or subtle placement of words and words as image. To quote Robert Smithson in 1967, this is “language to be looked at and/or things that need to be read.”

There will be over 80 videos being projected in multiple places and situations. A model of the entire CSULA campus will be installed in Gallery A, multiple videos will projected on it. Single-channel videos will be shown in Gallery B, and selected videos will play 3 STORIES TALL outdoors, on an adjacent building. The featured videos are from artists from Los Angeles, New York, and all over the world.

Please use link below to viewthe new website with screening schedule and locations.

http://www.jimovelmen.com/UniverseCity/UC_site.htm

Changing Boundaries: Historic Maps of the U.S.-Mexico BorderFrom the Collection of Simon Burrow (Sponsored by The Latin American Studies Program and the Cross Cultural Resource Centers)January 29-February 26

The April exhibition included stellar new works—all made in the last year—by CSULA undergraduate students from the Animation, Graphic Design, Fashion & Textiles, Art Education, and Studio Arts Options. Juried by the CSULA Department of Art faculty, our undergraduate students present a wide range of outstanding and provocative works in many mediums.

In addition, we are pleased to present a highlights exhibition in the display cases, outside the gallery, which features the Art History option. Two budding art historians, Leslie Jacobo and Tiffany Staines re-present selections from the “Walls of Passion: Murals of Los Angeles” exhibition as well as frame selections of Los Angeles’ Murals according to traditional, non-traditional and iconic narratives strategies. The last display case features CSULA alumnus, Kent Twitchell’s archival material and documents of his Harbor Freeway Overture mural in Los Angeles.

This exhibition and display cases represents the collective and creative output of the Department of Art at CSULA and we invite the greater CSULA community to come and view the compelling work created by our current undergraduate students.

Each quarter, the Fine Arts Gallery presents one or two professionally-curated exhibitions, which are easily accessible to both the University and local community. These exhibitions not only include highly engaging works of art produced by well-known professional artists, but also include advanced cutting-edge art that many museums and commercial galleries cannot and will not exhibit.

An exhibition of faculty artwork is scheduled biannually in the Fine Arts Gallery. All object-making faculty are invited to submit works. During the exhibition period, faculty present lectures, workshops and other events to complement their area of specialization and to broaden the scope of the exhibition.

The Fine Arts Gallery also collaborates with off campus institutions and on campus with the Luckman Fine Arts Gallery to present special thematic exhibitions and one-person exhibitions.

The Exhibition Program has an excellent history of complementing curricular programs and correlating exhibitions with concerns of classroom instruction in the visual arts. Student involvement spans a wide spectrum of activity that affects undergraduate and graduate art majors and many non-art majors.

The Fine Arts Gallery gives professors the opportunity to provide direct instruction and gives students first-hand experience with art objects. As part of the course curriculum, professors often require visits to the gallery for the purpose of critical analysis of the exhibition and specific artwork included in it.

The Fine Arts Gallery provides a professional quality exhibition space for MA and MFA students who are required to have a Creative Project Exhibition as part of the culminating experience for their degree.

Each spring quarter, the Fine Arts Gallery hosts the annual Student Art Exhibition. The public presentation of student artwork in the gallery benefits students by broadening the range of interaction and elevating the level of scholarly expectations. Throughout the year, faculty collect representational pieces of artwork from their classes. The final selection of work to be included in the exhibition is primarily the responsibility of the faculty member who volunteers to coordinate the exhibition and/or the gallery director, and is based on available space and other installation considerations.

COMA, the Closet of Modern Art, is a small student-run exhibition space on the first floor of the Fine Arts building. Each quarter, a graduate student volunteers to organize and direct weekly exhibitions by individual students, groups of students, or faculty in COMA.

COMA | Closet of Modern Art Installation

Other Past Exhibitions

To learn more about each of the 32 murals profiled in “Walls of Passion: The Murals of Los Angeles,” click on the links below. More details about the project and exhibit at Cal State L.A. can also be found on the Walls of Passion Lessons PDF.

The Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles invited the Wall of Passion: The Murals of Los Angeles photo – documentary organizers to exhibit their research during the month of March 2009. The exhibition was curated by the Art History Society at CSULA. A discussion was moderated by Professor Manuel Aguilar-Moreno (right) and graduate student Isabel Rojas-Williams (second from left).